SpartanMaker

Yogurt Marinated Grilled Shrimp, Prosciutto-Wrapped Grilled Asparagus & Wild Rice Salad:

Yogurt Marinated Grilled Shrimp, Prosciutto-Wrapped Grilled Asparagus & Wild Rice Salad:

In honor of spring, I made Vietnamese Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce tonight:

These take a lot of work to make, but they are quite tasty. I at ~1 3/4 rolls. For contrast, my wife had four.

Yogurt Marinated Grilled Shrimp, Prosciutto-Wrapped Grilled Asparagus & Wild Rice Salad:

I'll second all those recommendations, especially the Millie's sipping broth! I LIVED on that stuff for a while both pre and post surgery! Definitely worth checking out.

I think the first thing for you to do is determine if you're experiencing "head hunger", real hunger, or both.
True hunger typically will feel like your stomach rumbling or growling (at least pre-surgery), as well as cues like weakness, tiredness and irritability. You typically don't crave specific things in this case. This should also go away when you have a shake or your 1 meal.
Head hunger is an emotional response and typically in this instance, you'll will be craving specific foods (typically comfort foods). In this instance, it's less likely to go away when you eat.
If what you're experiencing is real hunger, my experience was that I got over that in 3 days or so as my body adjusted to the lower intake. It also helped to keep busy to have things to distract me. If this is not going away after a few days, you might want to talk to your surgery center and see if they'd allow you to maybe add an additional shake or something else like Jello or a pickle. (As an aside, I found pickles to be a life saver because my pre-op meals were just shakes (no actual meals like you get), and the additional of the pickle let me have something to actually eat vs. just having drinks all day.
For head hunger, you need to recognize it as such. Just being knowledgeable and recognizing what's going on will really help. I didn't do this, but some people find it really valuable to keep a journal so you can write down what your feeling and why this particular feel is making you want to eat. Distracting yourself with activities or socializing will also help here as well.

I'll do my best to help, but I'm going to have to start by asking some questions:
When you say the weight is "barely coming off", can you be more specific? How much in the last week, two weeks, last month? Can you clarify what your goal weight really is? In your profile, you're showing that you're currently at 78kg and your goal is 75kg. That's only about 6-7 pounds, not the 33-44 you listed. I'm thinking you probably have a new goal and have not updated your profile, but it's important to understand what you really are trying to do. When you say you are "eating pretty well", can you give some examples of what a typical day looks like? What is your daily caloric goal? What about Protein, fat and carbs? How are you determining your what you caloric and macronutrient intake should be? How are you tracking your intake? Do you weigh everything in grams before it goes into your mouth? Let me explain why I'm asking these questions. Typically when people are struggling with weight loss, we see a few common issues:
Unrealistic expectations. Especially if weight loss early on after surgery was easy, people tend to think it will continue that way until they reach goal weight. Unfortunately, that's not how this works. The heavier we are, the more we'll lose at first. The closer we get to goal, the harder it becomes. It can take months just to lose a few pounds if you are already pretty lean. You also have to really have your nutrition dialed in at that point.. I won't get too deep into the physiology here, but there are multiple reasons for this and it's 100% normal for this to happen. My point is that you may be right where you need to be. It's hard to know just that just based on what you posted above. Eating more than you think. Study after study shows that almost everyone thinks they eat less than they really do, even those that log their food using calorie tracking apps. It's sometimes simple things like those little tastes while preparing a meal, or that handful of nuts they forgot to log. Others, they just guess at calories because accurate tracking is really hard. Burning less than you think. Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they actually burn in a day. We often use estimates based on height and weight, but these can be off by may hundreds of calories depending on age, lifestyle, percent body fat, etc. Further, your calorie burn isn't the same all the time. It can vary by hundreds of calories per day even before you consider exercise. Speaking of exercise, we drastically overestimate the impact of exercise calories. For the vast majority of people, the calories they burn in a day don't actually change all that much due to exercise. Blaming things outside your control. It's natural for people look for causes for problems. If we take ownership of the problem, we can then take steps to correct it. It's when we place the blame on something we perceive to be outside our control that we can run into serious problems. Let me give you an example here. We can't escape simple physics. If you burn more calories in a day than you consume, you'll lose weight. Eat more than you burn and you gain weight. If I take responsibility for this, then it means I need to eat less or burn more to lose weight. I realize that's easier said than done, but without first taking responsibility for the problem, I'd have no hope of fixing the issue. If on the other hand, I were to say "I have a slow metabolism", I'd essentially be saying this issue is outside my control, even though the solution is the same as before: eat less than you burn. Thinking a particular diet/macronutrient is more important than calories. I noticed you hinted at that in your post. Calories are king here. Specific diets that emphasize one or more macronutrients can help, but they never trump calories. I can go into more detail later, but this post is already getting overly long so I think I'll stop here. Please provide some additional detail and I may be able to provide better guidance.

To be clear, the gas used in abdominal surgery is not inside your digestive tract, thus medications to address that issue won't help. Typically they use CO2 and it's actually pumped into your peritoneal cavity to help create space between the abdominal wall and your organs. This gives the surgeon room to work more safely, as well as help visually distinguish everything.
The reason it hurts so much is because basically your abdomen has been blown up like a balloon. This pushes up on your diaphragm, which in turn irritates the phrenic nerve. It's not uncommon to have referred pain in the chest, shoulder and neck as a result. Eventually the surgical gas will be absorbed into your bloodstream and you'll breathe it out, but until then this can be quite painful.
Walking helps, but won't fix it. Overall, it should pass in a few days.
I'd also make sure you're drinking enough because headaches are a classic symptom of dehydration. Dehydration is one of the main reasons bariatric surgery patients end up back in the hospital in the early post-op period, so please do everything you can to keep up with your Fluid intake.

I'll do my best to help, but I'm going to have to start by asking some questions:
When you say the weight is "barely coming off", can you be more specific? How much in the last week, two weeks, last month? Can you clarify what your goal weight really is? In your profile, you're showing that you're currently at 78kg and your goal is 75kg. That's only about 6-7 pounds, not the 33-44 you listed. I'm thinking you probably have a new goal and have not updated your profile, but it's important to understand what you really are trying to do. When you say you are "eating pretty well", can you give some examples of what a typical day looks like? What is your daily caloric goal? What about Protein, fat and carbs? How are you determining your what you caloric and macronutrient intake should be? How are you tracking your intake? Do you weigh everything in grams before it goes into your mouth? Let me explain why I'm asking these questions. Typically when people are struggling with weight loss, we see a few common issues:
Unrealistic expectations. Especially if weight loss early on after surgery was easy, people tend to think it will continue that way until they reach goal weight. Unfortunately, that's not how this works. The heavier we are, the more we'll lose at first. The closer we get to goal, the harder it becomes. It can take months just to lose a few pounds if you are already pretty lean. You also have to really have your nutrition dialed in at that point.. I won't get too deep into the physiology here, but there are multiple reasons for this and it's 100% normal for this to happen. My point is that you may be right where you need to be. It's hard to know just that just based on what you posted above. Eating more than you think. Study after study shows that almost everyone thinks they eat less than they really do, even those that log their food using calorie tracking apps. It's sometimes simple things like those little tastes while preparing a meal, or that handful of nuts they forgot to log. Others, they just guess at calories because accurate tracking is really hard. Burning less than you think. Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they actually burn in a day. We often use estimates based on height and weight, but these can be off by may hundreds of calories depending on age, lifestyle, percent body fat, etc. Further, your calorie burn isn't the same all the time. It can vary by hundreds of calories per day even before you consider exercise. Speaking of exercise, we drastically overestimate the impact of exercise calories. For the vast majority of people, the calories they burn in a day don't actually change all that much due to exercise. Blaming things outside your control. It's natural for people look for causes for problems. If we take ownership of the problem, we can then take steps to correct it. It's when we place the blame on something we perceive to be outside our control that we can run into serious problems. Let me give you an example here. We can't escape simple physics. If you burn more calories in a day than you consume, you'll lose weight. Eat more than you burn and you gain weight. If I take responsibility for this, then it means I need to eat less or burn more to lose weight. I realize that's easier said than done, but without first taking responsibility for the problem, I'd have no hope of fixing the issue. If on the other hand, I were to say "I have a slow metabolism", I'd essentially be saying this issue is outside my control, even though the solution is the same as before: eat less than you burn. Thinking a particular diet/macronutrient is more important than calories. I noticed you hinted at that in your post. Calories are king here. Specific diets that emphasize one or more macronutrients can help, but they never trump calories. I can go into more detail later, but this post is already getting overly long so I think I'll stop here. Please provide some additional detail and I may be able to provide better guidance.

GERD can be a possible side-effect of sleeve surgery, but not bypass. Medications like omeprazole work for some people, but severe GERD can lead to revision surgery. Typically these patients are converted to gastric bypass to relieve their issues. There are a few people here that have been through this, so hopefully they'll chime in.

I'll do my best to help, but I'm going to have to start by asking some questions:
When you say the weight is "barely coming off", can you be more specific? How much in the last week, two weeks, last month? Can you clarify what your goal weight really is? In your profile, you're showing that you're currently at 78kg and your goal is 75kg. That's only about 6-7 pounds, not the 33-44 you listed. I'm thinking you probably have a new goal and have not updated your profile, but it's important to understand what you really are trying to do. When you say you are "eating pretty well", can you give some examples of what a typical day looks like? What is your daily caloric goal? What about Protein, fat and carbs? How are you determining your what you caloric and macronutrient intake should be? How are you tracking your intake? Do you weigh everything in grams before it goes into your mouth? Let me explain why I'm asking these questions. Typically when people are struggling with weight loss, we see a few common issues:
Unrealistic expectations. Especially if weight loss early on after surgery was easy, people tend to think it will continue that way until they reach goal weight. Unfortunately, that's not how this works. The heavier we are, the more we'll lose at first. The closer we get to goal, the harder it becomes. It can take months just to lose a few pounds if you are already pretty lean. You also have to really have your nutrition dialed in at that point.. I won't get too deep into the physiology here, but there are multiple reasons for this and it's 100% normal for this to happen. My point is that you may be right where you need to be. It's hard to know just that just based on what you posted above. Eating more than you think. Study after study shows that almost everyone thinks they eat less than they really do, even those that log their food using calorie tracking apps. It's sometimes simple things like those little tastes while preparing a meal, or that handful of nuts they forgot to log. Others, they just guess at calories because accurate tracking is really hard. Burning less than you think. Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they actually burn in a day. We often use estimates based on height and weight, but these can be off by may hundreds of calories depending on age, lifestyle, percent body fat, etc. Further, your calorie burn isn't the same all the time. It can vary by hundreds of calories per day even before you consider exercise. Speaking of exercise, we drastically overestimate the impact of exercise calories. For the vast majority of people, the calories they burn in a day don't actually change all that much due to exercise. Blaming things outside your control. It's natural for people look for causes for problems. If we take ownership of the problem, we can then take steps to correct it. It's when we place the blame on something we perceive to be outside our control that we can run into serious problems. Let me give you an example here. We can't escape simple physics. If you burn more calories in a day than you consume, you'll lose weight. Eat more than you burn and you gain weight. If I take responsibility for this, then it means I need to eat less or burn more to lose weight. I realize that's easier said than done, but without first taking responsibility for the problem, I'd have no hope of fixing the issue. If on the other hand, I were to say "I have a slow metabolism", I'd essentially be saying this issue is outside my control, even though the solution is the same as before: eat less than you burn. Thinking a particular diet/macronutrient is more important than calories. I noticed you hinted at that in your post. Calories are king here. Specific diets that emphasize one or more macronutrients can help, but they never trump calories. I can go into more detail later, but this post is already getting overly long so I think I'll stop here. Please provide some additional detail and I may be able to provide better guidance.

I'll do my best to help, but I'm going to have to start by asking some questions:
When you say the weight is "barely coming off", can you be more specific? How much in the last week, two weeks, last month? Can you clarify what your goal weight really is? In your profile, you're showing that you're currently at 78kg and your goal is 75kg. That's only about 6-7 pounds, not the 33-44 you listed. I'm thinking you probably have a new goal and have not updated your profile, but it's important to understand what you really are trying to do. When you say you are "eating pretty well", can you give some examples of what a typical day looks like? What is your daily caloric goal? What about Protein, fat and carbs? How are you determining your what you caloric and macronutrient intake should be? How are you tracking your intake? Do you weigh everything in grams before it goes into your mouth? Let me explain why I'm asking these questions. Typically when people are struggling with weight loss, we see a few common issues:
Unrealistic expectations. Especially if weight loss early on after surgery was easy, people tend to think it will continue that way until they reach goal weight. Unfortunately, that's not how this works. The heavier we are, the more we'll lose at first. The closer we get to goal, the harder it becomes. It can take months just to lose a few pounds if you are already pretty lean. You also have to really have your nutrition dialed in at that point.. I won't get too deep into the physiology here, but there are multiple reasons for this and it's 100% normal for this to happen. My point is that you may be right where you need to be. It's hard to know just that just based on what you posted above. Eating more than you think. Study after study shows that almost everyone thinks they eat less than they really do, even those that log their food using calorie tracking apps. It's sometimes simple things like those little tastes while preparing a meal, or that handful of nuts they forgot to log. Others, they just guess at calories because accurate tracking is really hard. Burning less than you think. Most people have absolutely no idea how many calories they actually burn in a day. We often use estimates based on height and weight, but these can be off by may hundreds of calories depending on age, lifestyle, percent body fat, etc. Further, your calorie burn isn't the same all the time. It can vary by hundreds of calories per day even before you consider exercise. Speaking of exercise, we drastically overestimate the impact of exercise calories. For the vast majority of people, the calories they burn in a day don't actually change all that much due to exercise. Blaming things outside your control. It's natural for people look for causes for problems. If we take ownership of the problem, we can then take steps to correct it. It's when we place the blame on something we perceive to be outside our control that we can run into serious problems. Let me give you an example here. We can't escape simple physics. If you burn more calories in a day than you consume, you'll lose weight. Eat more than you burn and you gain weight. If I take responsibility for this, then it means I need to eat less or burn more to lose weight. I realize that's easier said than done, but without first taking responsibility for the problem, I'd have no hope of fixing the issue. If on the other hand, I were to say "I have a slow metabolism", I'd essentially be saying this issue is outside my control, even though the solution is the same as before: eat less than you burn. Thinking a particular diet/macronutrient is more important than calories. I noticed you hinted at that in your post. Calories are king here. Specific diets that emphasize one or more macronutrients can help, but they never trump calories. I can go into more detail later, but this post is already getting overly long so I think I'll stop here. Please provide some additional detail and I may be able to provide better guidance.

Just be careful with selecting Meal Replacements since a lot of them won't meet the guidelines as outlined by your team. As an example, the Bariatric Pal creamy chicken Soup Meal Replacement mentioned above is too low in Protein. While there are a few products out there that will meet those guidelines, most won't. They'll either be too low in protein, or too high in carbs. This includes the vast majority of products you'll find at grocery & drug stores.

Is it just me, or is it really odd they'd tell you what not to use, but didn't tell you what you should be using? Surely they must have some suggestions that fit what they want here?
As far as I know, all Meal Replacement shakes contain added Vitamins as that's sort of the point. They also contain added carbs and fats that most Protein Shakes don't have.
I'd say the vast majority of people here were told to just use Protein shakes. That's typically for a few reasons:
First, especially if you also take a Vitamin supplement, you're not going to suffer any long term harm using protein shakes instead of meal replacement shakes for a few weeks. Second, most meal replacement shakes are lower in protein than a typical Protein Shake. We want as much protein as possible to help prevent the breakdown of muscle tissue when dieting. Third, most bariatric doctors don't actually want you consuming very many carbs, since one of the main goals of the pre-surgical diet is to shrink your liver to make the surgery safer. The best way to do that is a very low carb diet. (The liver is one of the main ways your body stores glycogen, so by depleting it of glycogen (carbs), it will get smaller, even if no other changes take place.) TL;DR: Ask your team what they want you to use.

Is it just me, or is it really odd they'd tell you what not to use, but didn't tell you what you should be using? Surely they must have some suggestions that fit what they want here?
As far as I know, all Meal Replacement shakes contain added Vitamins as that's sort of the point. They also contain added carbs and fats that most Protein Shakes don't have.
I'd say the vast majority of people here were told to just use Protein shakes. That's typically for a few reasons:
First, especially if you also take a Vitamin supplement, you're not going to suffer any long term harm using protein shakes instead of meal replacement shakes for a few weeks. Second, most meal replacement shakes are lower in protein than a typical Protein Shake. We want as much protein as possible to help prevent the breakdown of muscle tissue when dieting. Third, most bariatric doctors don't actually want you consuming very many carbs, since one of the main goals of the pre-surgical diet is to shrink your liver to make the surgery safer. The best way to do that is a very low carb diet. (The liver is one of the main ways your body stores glycogen, so by depleting it of glycogen (carbs), it will get smaller, even if no other changes take place.) TL;DR: Ask your team what they want you to use.

In honor of spring, I made Vietnamese Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce tonight:

These take a lot of work to make, but they are quite tasty. I at ~1 3/4 rolls. For contrast, my wife had four.

There are no limits to what you can lose, nor is there anything that says you will regain any specific amount, or frankly that you will regain anything at all. I think we do ourselves a HUGE disservice (and bariatric doctors are bad about this), by thinking in terms of what's "normal" or "average". Keep in mind that averages are determined by people that regained everything, as well as those the are clinically underweight.
I would strongly urge you to stop thinking about what you can expect, and start thinking about what you want.

There's really no reason for your insurance company to deny coverage here. While gastric bypass is obviously performed for weight loss, that's not the only reason. There are normal weight people that sometimes have it done for various issue like severe GERD and issues with gastric emptying.
My point is that even though we think of it as a bariatric procedure, in your case, you need it purely for medical reasons. They can't deny it on the basis that they don't cover bariatric surgery, since that's not why you need the surgery.

This doesn't strike me as self-sabotage, as much as addictive behavior. I should clarify that I'm not a therapist, but even if I were, no one can be diagnosed simply based on a post on a message board.
Transfer addiction post-bariatric surgery is incredibly common so I feel like it's worth it to seek help ASAP and get this sorted out.

In honor of spring, I made Vietnamese Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce tonight:

These take a lot of work to make, but they are quite tasty. I at ~1 3/4 rolls. For contrast, my wife had four.

@NickelChip made a great point about photos. Another really good way to "see" the difference is to take measurements with a tape measure. I wouldn't do so more than about once a month, personally. There are multiple places you can measure and you certainly don't have to do them all, but I'd say the most common would be:
Neck (probably more for men since this is good to know for dress shirts) Bust / Chest (at widest part) Under Bust (mostly for women only since this is needed for bra size) Each Upper Arm (either at the largest point or midway between the shoulder and elbow if you can't tell) Belly / Natural Waist Under belly (especially for men since this is where casual men's pants typically sit) Hips / Butt (you can do both if your hips and your butt are perhaps larger at different places) Each Thigh (typically at the widest point) Each Calf If you do this, it's important to try to be consistent in where and how you measure. It can also be really helpful to have help for some of these.

There's really no reason for your insurance company to deny coverage here. While gastric bypass is obviously performed for weight loss, that's not the only reason. There are normal weight people that sometimes have it done for various issue like severe GERD and issues with gastric emptying.
My point is that even though we think of it as a bariatric procedure, in your case, you need it purely for medical reasons. They can't deny it on the basis that they don't cover bariatric surgery, since that's not why you need the surgery.

In honor of spring, I made Vietnamese Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce tonight:

These take a lot of work to make, but they are quite tasty. I at ~1 3/4 rolls. For contrast, my wife had four.

@NickelChip made a great point about photos. Another really good way to "see" the difference is to take measurements with a tape measure. I wouldn't do so more than about once a month, personally. There are multiple places you can measure and you certainly don't have to do them all, but I'd say the most common would be:
Neck (probably more for men since this is good to know for dress shirts) Bust / Chest (at widest part) Under Bust (mostly for women only since this is needed for bra size) Each Upper Arm (either at the largest point or midway between the shoulder and elbow if you can't tell) Belly / Natural Waist Under belly (especially for men since this is where casual men's pants typically sit) Hips / Butt (you can do both if your hips and your butt are perhaps larger at different places) Each Thigh (typically at the widest point) Each Calf If you do this, it's important to try to be consistent in where and how you measure. It can also be really helpful to have help for some of these.

In honor of spring, I made Vietnamese Spring Rolls with Peanut Dipping Sauce tonight:

These take a lot of work to make, but they are quite tasty. I at ~1 3/4 rolls. For contrast, my wife had four.